


Skin Deep

by HugAZombie



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Disabled!Arthur, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugAZombie/pseuds/HugAZombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A paraplegic. A coffee boy. And a reminder that love isn't just for the able-bodied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin Deep

**Author's Note:**

> My dad is a paraplegic and that, as well as the fact there there isn't enough disability fics (beyond the popular blindness, deafness or mute-ness) inspired this. This is old-ish and could probably do with a bit of a look over but nevermind :)
> 
> UNBETA'd

What he hates most are the stares, the pitying stares of the able bodied as if sitting in a wheelchair makes him somehow less of a man. Their eyes, women especially, maybe drawn to his face to begin with, travel his body and find withering legs and a metal frame and the look in their eyes that may once have been a little interested, blank out complexly into a misplaced sympathy. Ugly pity that makes his skin crawl with anger and disgust.

He doesn't need their fucking sympathy, he needs their _normalcy_. He needs to feel like the hulking skeleton of his wheelchair does not make him some kind of unapproachable creature, that it doesn't make him different and hideous and something to keep your distance from because, heaven forbid, his disability may be contagious.

He has become a pariah. People no longer know how to communicate with him, as if the mere suggestion of his past as a freely walking man or their own ability to run or jump or not have the fear of not reaching a toilet in time before their fucking _bladder_ gives up all pretence of control will somehow make him feel _bad_ or _down_ about his situation.

And obviously, the poor little cripple has had enough shit in his life without _that._

So they don't communicate at all – as if avoiding him will erase the discomfort of reality. Women he was once quite comfortable flirting with on the trains or in coffee shops now throw him a wary smile and hurry through the mandatory interactions.

He knows, he thinks with a sigh, he knows they are simply at a loss at dealing with him because how do you deal with a man who has gotten into an accident? How do you talk to a man who is near wheelchair bound and had been, just two years prior, able to walk? They have never coped with something like it; they cannot possibly guess just what changes, both physical and emotional, he has gone through.

Rationally, he knows that.

Emotionally, however, it just makes the situation so much harder to cope with.

He scrubs a tired hand down his face before dropping his hands into his lap. Seated at a table, he gazes out of the window, a steaming coffee (black as sin and as bitter as he feels) staring at him silently. Around him there is the low hum of conversation and the rumbling growl of the machine. A baby cries just behind him and he hears the mother shush it before continuing with her conversation.

He watches the world move outside with ease in the lazy day. The elderly shuffle along on their daily, mid-morning walks, mothers push prams with that single mindedness only frazzled mother well aware of the tight schedule enforced by school days possess.

Before his accident, Arthur would be working, overlooking proposals and cases. He had once been a very good prosecutor, renowned for his many wins in even the most trying of cases. But then he had gotten a little cocky on a motorbike in the country lanes, rounded a corner a little too fast for a wet day and paid the price for his folly.

He accepted his fault a few months after getting out of hospital, he had also accepted his disability – no Pendragon would be seen to be in denial.

He had had to give up his job – medical retirement his father had called it. He knew it was his fathers' own way of helping him, giving him some less to worry about whilst he was still healing and getting used to his near useless legs, but it had still panged his heart just a little bit. And now he filled his days with not a lot. Most of his friends were working during the day, and whilst he will often visit family and friends in the evening to break the monotony, he has very little to make of his day.

Which leads him here, to his usual spot in the small family-owned coffee lounge with a slowly cooling coffee and a wandering mind. It gives him an out of the flat he owns (luckily no move was required for now, because, as all newly furbished establishments are meant to be, it was fully wheelchair friendly), which during the first few months of his recovery was slowly driving him insane and have continued to do so.

He turns his eyes away from the window and sips his coffee. He smiles at the taste – one of the better coffees in this area – he had to hand to them. The coffee lounge is a comfortable place, and when Lancelot had first dragged him in here, Arthur remembers eyeing it with a hint of disdain. It wasn't the usual place he would go. It was family-friendly, with comfy armchairs and round tables and strange, abstract art on the walls. The colourings were comforting, warm browns and greens. It wasn't classy, it was far from sophisticated, but there was just something about it, a homeliness Arthur unused to, that struck a chord with him and kept him coming back.

"You finished with that?" Arthur looks to the boy who interrupted him. A dark haired man only a few years his junior he guessed with startling blue eyes set in a face a little to pale to be strictly healthy. Merlin – last name unknown and Arthur didn't particularly care to find out.

He is a strange boy. He had been working here for a while before Arthur started frequenting this place and was one of the only few people who didn't seem to hold any pity in his eyes after he came back. Strategically, the boy didn't inquire to Arthur's extended absence as he had heard the boy ask of other obvious regulars, and Arthur had seen his eyes glance at his chair. But, surprisingly the boy hadn't faltered in his rehearsal of Arthur's order, his eyes hadn't flashed with that hated pity or uncomfortable wariness, and his cheeky (whether intentional or not) grin remained firmly in place.

Arthur nods his head. "Yes, thank you." Merlin smiles at him leaning to grab the empty mug of his previous coffee, a damp cloth in his other hand and the black rectangular apron tied around his too slim waist.

"What's eating you?" His head is tilted to the side in query. "You have a cloud over your head as black as sin."

Arthur grits his teeth. "I'm fine," he answers, stiltedly. And Merlin backs away, hands, still clutching the mug and cloth, held in front in surrender. "Just asking." He shrugs, a flash of faint hurt flitting in his eyes before it is gone in an instant and Arthur is certain he was imagining things. Merlin smiles a sheepish half smile and disappears just as he is hailed by a brunette behind the counter, leaving Arthur once again alone with his thoughts.

\--------------

The lift doors slide open, the mechanical feminine voice overhead announcing their arrival. Arthur pushes out of the tight space with ease, fingers curled around the metal bars tracing the circular wheel and pushing forward down the hall, his wheels making twin indents in the plush carpet at he moves. He pauses at his door, unhooking his keys from his belt and slotting it into the lock.

He frowns when the key refuses to turn anymore and eases the door open curiously. "Father?" he calls out as it takes back his key and pushes inside. He closes the door behind him. "Morgana?" He slides down the seat slightly, his feet planted on the floor before he stands. His knees buckle automatically, bend to support his weight. The join in the callipers supporting his useless ankles squeak a little and he glares down at them in annoyance.

Bloody things. He oils them, but that only buys him a few weeks silence. He would really need to talk to the hospital about that, see if there is anything they can do.

"Nah, mate. It's me." Arthur looks up, eyeing his friends leaning in the doorway of the kitchen with one of Arthur's beers open and half empty in his hands. He rolls his eyes.

"Of course it is," Arthur drawls, leaving his wheelchair where it is, opting to move it later – or Lancelot can when he leaves, whichever. "You know, I didn't give you a key so you can drink all of my beer." His look is disapproving even as he walks, his movement still not truly perfected and unused to his altered body to the wooden railing that now line his home.

His walk is odd. Not the old swagger he used to have. The break to the lower quarter of his spine has all but ruined his legs, his ankles are useless and his feet void of all feeling. His legs are skinny, he lost the muscle after the accident (and also the rather nice bum he once had as well), and feeling only really comes back past the knee and even then not as the extent an able-bodied man might have. As his knees were also fairly useless, walking for him consisted more of tensing his stomach muscles and using his hips to move his legs.

It was a difficult thing to get used to, as the shoes he wore (horrible trainers ordered in by the hospital – two years since he wore decent shoes... he misses them) had to have thicker soles, about an inch, so that the metal casing and slot for his callipers could be made and not affect the shoe.

He holds onto the railing, wondering if he should've stayed in the wheelchair – he forgets even now sometimes that he has to work up his stamina once more, for walking as he does now requires a lot more effort than it ever had two years prior.

Lancelot only laughs and holds the bottle up to him. "Ah, but this is a celebration, Arthur," he answers, ducking back into the kitchen before returning with a second bottle and a bottle opener. He then motions with his head towards the living room, which the hall bleeds into, a nice open plan space with an office space in front of the large bay window. Arthur smiles at him, using the railing before walking without aid to the sofa and collapsing into it.

Lancelot places his friends' beer on the side with a dull thump and settles back into the opposite corner of the sofa, as Arthur bends to let up his trouser legs, unwrap the Velcro fasting and slide both the shoe and calliper from his legs. "What's the occasion?"

"I asked Gwen to marry me." He takes a sip of beer. "She said yes."

Arthur raises his eyebrows. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised really. She can't have me, might as well go for second best."

Lancelot chuckles. "Bastard."

No really," Arthur reaches out and the men clasp each other's wrists in a variation of the more traditional handshake. "Congratulations, took you long enough."

Lancelot grins at him and nods. "Yeah, thought she might say no." He shrugs and takes another sip of acohol.

"Come crawling to me, yeah, I'd be worried too," he preens, ducking away from the blow Lancelot aims at him with a laugh. "When's the date?"

"Hell if I know. I just asked her, I'll leave the rest to her."

Arthur snorts. "As if, you'll be right beside her picking out flowers – bloody pansy." Arthur's grin is wicked as he leans over and presses his thumb to Lancelot's forehead. "You'll be like that forever now, mate. Totally whipped."

Lancelot bats his hand away and rolls his eyes. "Don't be jealous now Arthur, you're still the prettiest girl I know."

Arthur shakes his head, a small smile playing on his lips. "Damn straight I am, and Gwen knows it too." The men stare at each other for the moment, before the previous quiet of the flat is completely broken with a childish bout of uncontrollable laughter that comes from nowhere.

**Author's Note:**

> Caliper image: http://2.imimg.com/data2/OV/AU/MY-3172558/below-knee-caliper-250x250.jpg
> 
> Now, my dad's caliper is slightly different tot he one shown (I spent ages trying to find a picture, but it is surprisingly difficult!) My dads calipers, and therefore Arthurs, are only to under the knee so ignore the top fastening bit, and also, my dads only has the metal brace bit on the outside of the leg, rather than both outside and inside his leg. 
> 
> I hope that makes sense, if not, I apologise!


End file.
